John Mayer Defends His Crazy Tibetan Robe Collection

The first time we saw the cover of John Mayer's 2012 album, Paradise Valley, we double-took so hard we almost snapped a vertebrae. What happened to America's beloved celebrity panty-dropper, known for dressing like an overgrown teen in rare Nikes, cargo pants, and V-neck tees? This new guy looked like he'd tripped out hard on a bunch of acid and CSNY vinyl, gone vision-questing across the denim shops of Japan, then returned to the Great Plains to rekindle his best-friendship with his long-lost Labrador. We were confused, curious, and impressed, and from that moment on, we began watching Mayer's style more closely. And what we found is that Mayer's intense passion for collecting Nikes and Rollies has now been redirected to the handmade, highly expensive, and extremely cultish Japanese brand Visvim, designed by a denim-whisperer named Hiroki Nakamura who is, in certain tiny circles, revered like a god. Here, we talk to the style-world's most hardwired collector about what happened to all his sneakers, how hiding under layers of indigo helped him through a career hiatus and a booze-heavy rough patch, and whether or not he really has a massive Visvim collection stashed in a storage space in Florida.

GQ: How's it going?

**John Mayer: **Hold on—let me finish tying my bow tie for this call.

Ha! Your local GQ representative thanks you for that. Only thing is I'm in my pajamas.

Just like a good New York writer. What are you drinking, bourbon?

Yes, and smoking a cigar. So let's talk about the evolution of your style, and about some of your collections. For starters: Do you still think of yourself as a sneaker collector?

No.

But there was a time where you were into it heavy, right?

Oh, I was into it, yeah. I think we all were. It was an extension of adolescence. Of baseball cards or something. All of my friends had closets—all you'd see was Nike orange from all the bos. And I had 'em all. I think there was a Golden Age of it. There was the Air Max 360. There was the moment when they would put out all these great Air Max 90s. And I think what happened was that, for me and all my friends, it was supposed to make a market, but the market never got made. It was like, "These are limited edition. I'm gonna buy 'em for $85 and maybe I can weed and seed and sell them for $210 two years from now." But the market never got made and people just looked around and went, Well, this is actually costing a lot of money.

"I'm in way deeper than $85 now."

Yeah, you end up going, There's gotta be something else out there. But what was cool about the sneaker thing is it got people into physical product.

Right. Sneakers are the gateway. So how much of that stuff do you still have?

I've given a lot of stuff away. I speak for a lot of former sneakerheads who are like, "I can't start an eBay company to sell sneakers that are $25." So you end up giving them to people who are your size. There are a couple of really cool things that I still have. Anything that's a collab: Futura has done it, Kaws has done it. Those things are interesting to hold onto. All of the Hiroshi Fujiwara Fragment stuff; anything that has that Harajuku vibe I think I've held on to. But there was a time when they were coming out with a bunch of different colorways and naming it after what the colors represented. When you start getting into Air Max '95 Bacon and Eggs, you're like... Alright.

But it got me, and it got everyone I know, into the idea of the pursuit of physical product. Like, how many Drake records are there? The answer is as many as you want. In the face of this digital turnout of things, you go, "I want to have something that not everybody has. I want something that differentiates me."

Do you currently collect anything that you can't wear?

You know, there are certain things that I have in my collection that I would like to wear—I mean in my mind's eye, where I'm a lot of things that I can't be in real life. And there have probably been times where I've gone too far into the ambition of it rather than what the authentic vibe should be.

Oh, do you mean wearing something that you can't quite pull off?

Yeah. So I have a lot of old robes. A lot of Tibetan robes, and it'll end up in People magazine that I was wearing a bathrobe. And it's like, "Well, actually it's a totally hand-painted, natural dye... It's made with real indigo and crushed up ladybugs!" So yeah, sometimes you'll buy something because there's something that strikes you about it, and you'll hang it up and you'll go, "I don't know how yet, but someday..." And either times change or you see—this is very important, and I'm not afraid to admit this—you see someone else you look up to contextualize it in a way that allows you to find your way into wearing it. All of fashion is completely, one-thousand-percent context-based.

Can you give an example?

Yeah, absolutely. If you go to Japan—Japan has these guys, some of them are designers, some of them are artists, and you see how they implement it, and what their point of reference is. I've never stolen somebody's fashion, but I've stolen people's points of reference.

That's all we ever do.

Here's a case in point: If your only reference to baggy jeans is Marky Mark or Kris Kross, then you won't want to wear them. But if your reference is like miners from the '40s—you look at a picture of people who were working around World War II and they're using rope to hold their jeans on because they didn't have a bunch of sizes back then—then you get into workwear. If that's your point of reference and you have a good song playing? That might just fuse into your brain.

So that's all it is for me. It's so much fun to collect points of reference, and pay homage or tribute to them, or bite a little bit. Who cares? You're allowed to bite, you know? What took me years to figure out is how to tailor it—no pun intended—to who I am, so you're not just walking around, like, displaying clothes on yourself.

So you're doing more than just walking around in someone else's context.

Yeah, you develop your own rules. Like, I've got a rule: You only get a certain amount of flair points, and you can't spend too many points on one outfit.

Do you have an actual number of points you stick to?

No, but I'll make it up! So if you're gonna wear a hat—which you absolutely can—that's most of your flair points.

You blew a big part of your budget right there.

Big part of your budget on your hat. Or if you're just gonna wear jeans and a T-shirt, you can go nuts with the boots. And if you want to wear a white T-shirt and blue jeans, you can wear whatever you want over it—you can wear the weirdest Tibetan robe over it. That's your show-off moment.

Who knows, maybe a few necklii...

That's right. A couple of necklii? Great. It just takes a while to fine-tune your ambition with the authenticity. I'll see somebody wearing a hat, and I know it's the closest thing they can find to the hat they have in their mind, and that's fine. Because I know it's a journey to the hat. You have to learn what's out there. It was a journey to my hat, and now I know the name of every crease you can get in a hat. I know every type of silhouette.

Do you mean like every hat style from rodeo styles to workwear styles?

Yeah. You know, whether it's a Montana peak or whatever.

What are you currently wearing?

You know, I watched Rio Grande—no, it was Rio Bravo, which is a different movie than Rio Grande, but they both have John Wayne in them... Anyway, John Wayne is wearing this cavalry hat that was just so badass. So I go, I want to wear that. So I had a copy of that hat made, and it just looks like the kind of hat you would drink water out of.

It's been really fun going through Western movies and finding all the different ways you can wear a hat. I don't do it as much as I used to, because I feel like I've completed the journey. You know, I got made fun of for the hat for a long time. And now I see a lot of people going for the hat. A lot of people.

What's your reaction when you're ahead of the curve on something and you take shit for it?

Oh, I don't care. I don't care at all. There are a lot of stylish people who haven't branded themselves as such. There are a lot of secret style junkies out there, and I just haven't had the discussion with my publicist where I said, "Make me the best dressed." And a lot of times I'm not the best dressed. Look at it like this: A lot of the best tattoo artists have some fucked up arms because they try stuff out on themselves.

Right. Their knees—any place where they can tattoo themselves has some crazy shit going on.

So I try stuff out on myself. And the thing about wearing a Tibetan robe on an airplane is that you can use it for like six different things.

So a Tibetan robe is functional?

You can use it as a background to take pictures of things for Instagram. You can use it as a blanket. You can use it as a tent. I've watched movies under it on the airplane—it's breathable! You can use it as a paparazzi shield. Maybe you get made fun of in People, but who knows who Hiroki Nakamura is that reads People magazine? Then there's one or two people who jump into the comments and go, "No, actually that's Visvim. That's really hard to come by. That represents a lot of hard work by artisans in Japan."

If style is about sending out coded signals, I guess the _People _readership is not who you're sending your signals to.

That's right. And this is some shit: Something you learn when you grow up is that everybody who is the "worst dressed" is actually not the worst dressed. They're just trying to accelerate a little bit. People aren't idiots. They're not like, "I think I want to wear this dumb thing to the Oscars." They're worst dressed because they're outside of the norm. Then you get to be 27-years-old or something and you go, "Oh, worst dressed just means ambitious."

To understand your style transformation and how you got to Tibetan robes, there are some points from your recent biography that I'd like for us to try to connect. I'm going to list them: Career hiatus, throat injury, Laurel Canyon, Bozeman, Born and Raised, Visvim, Japan, indigo, crushed-up ladybugs...

I'm probably still trying to connect those myself. Well, I'm a big follower and collector of Visvim.

Did it start with the shoes?

No, it was actually the opposite, because they didn't start making the shoes in size 12 until 2008 or 2009. You know, looking back on it—and, by the way, all that is completely authentic, it's not me sitting in a boardroom—I think part of the idea was hiding out. Sometimes, if you don't see the person you recognize in the mirror, then you're free from your own punishment. It's hard to explain. You're free from your own criticism. If you don't recognize the person you see in the mirror, then you're free from self-persecution.

It's almost like a witness relocation program for yourself. Women do it, men do it. You have a change in your life, or a change in your philosophy, a change in your lifestyle, you have a loss, or you have heartache, so you go blonde or you grow a beard or you do both. Sometimes in life you just don't want to be recognizable to yourself. A lot of people get fucked up for that reason. I was drinking—I was drinking a whole hell of a lot. I was heavy, and layers favor the heavy man. I hope that ends up on top of a photo: "Layers favor the heavy man." [Laughs.]

That's helpful GQ style advice right there.

Well, wearing layers is sort of like—just trying to get out of it by way of subterfuge. And then you get healthy again, and you put on your white tee and jeans and you're like bam_!_

So I think I was hiding out from myself. I was hiding out from what I felt like was a whole lot of pigeon-holing. And it's also the way I would do anything: [Collecting Visvim] became a pursuit. And it's bribery—it's self-bribery. A lot of times I don't want to get on an airplane unless there's something in it for me. And sometimes the only thing is the sort of intellectual or aesthetic adventure, and that's what gets me on the airplane. I said this quote one time: "Don't pack for where you're going, pack for who you want to be when you get there." So it's like, Okay, we'll do this flight in the '40s. We'll dress up. Or, we're gonna go to New York and do Spartan Pack: Just the perfect A-2 Bomber jacket, a bunch of different colored T-shirts, a couple different pairs of jeans, and some boots. And the rest of it we're gonna fill in with personality.

Certain people seem to have an almost spiritual response to Visvim—as though the clothes are more than just inanimate objects. Is that part of what draws you to the brand?

I think so. There's no other brand like it. It's fashion, but it's not. It's "street fashion," but it's not. These pieces transcend fashion or even clothing sometimes. It's what you might call an emotional connection with something material, you know? Like, I found the luckiest build of an A-2 bomber that Hiroki made for me. I'm holding it right now.

What do you mean by luckiest?

You get the right pieces of leather that work together, you know what I mean? It's just perfect. I wrote my name on the tag. I've never written my name on the tag. It's one of those jackets that stands up on it's own, and I want to live inside it. I want to hide under it and sleep in it. It's just a jacket, right? But no, it's not just a jacket, because if you took it everywhere you went, it could be part of your story.

And a leather jacket really is a second skin. That hide was alive for real at one point.

I've brought jackets on trips as a companion. You wake up in the morning in some city you don't-know-slash-don't-want-to-be-in, you throw on your watch and jacket and you go, "Alright, here we go." Me and my jacket have seen some weird shit.

And I think Hiroki has created stuff with a depth to it. He's just trying to make the very best of each thing. What I'm doing is trying to find each piece that sends the other pieces like it away. It really is like playing with your toys when you're a kid. You're just trying to complete something. You're going, "I want the closet that is timeless and bulletproof." Because, look, life can be very boring. This is just another way to add another little vibration. A little hum that goes under all of it that makes it a little more interesting. That's all.

Okay, hear me out on this one: This being GQ, we do have a resident Visvim head. So earlier I said to him, "I'm talking to John Mayer today. What should I ask him?" And he said, "I heard he has two of everything from Visvim—one that he wears, and one on ice. And the stuff that's on ice is in a storage space in Florida."

_[Laughs.] _Um, I don't have two of every piece. I have a very healthy representation of each season. There are certain things that I think are so incredible, and that I don't believe are gonna be made again, so I like to have a couple versions of them. I've been known to keep things on ice, and there's a rather extensive collection in a storage space that's not in Florida. It's in California.

Let the record show: Not in Florida. So one more question—What's the story behind the look you wore for the Paradise Valley album cover?

Hiroki styled that. I forgot to put him in the credits. He was in LA at the time, and he brought a bunch of stuff with him and put it together. I think I was protected in a sense by the fact that he styled it. I also believe that when you're taking a picture, you can be hyper-styled. I don't think I would've ever walked around like that, but I think if you're taking a picture you can be more theatrical and more artistic. And I feel like that's a little honor to have a Hiroki-Nakamura-styled photo. That was his blanket, my hat, my dog...

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